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Salmi of Game

A pheasant stew cooked in Espagnole sauce with port, red currant jelly, and mushrooms.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Red currant and mushroom work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 97 recipes. Both carry isoamyl acetate, which smells banana, pear. The science ↓

Salmi of Game

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook

  1. Separate the pheasant into neat joints and remove the skin.

  2. Place the joints in a stew-pan or casserole with the sauce, port, jelly, and mushrooms.

  3. Simmer gently until tender.

Serve

  1. Serve on a hot dish or in the casserole, garnished with pastry fleurons, mushrooms, and cherries or apricots.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Red currant + mushroomtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together97 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  2. Pheasant + mushroomtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together145 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Pheasant + saucetop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together290 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanoic acid (soapy, waxy).

  4. Sauce + mushroomtop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,480 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).

  5. Sauce + red curranttop 31% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together104 recipes

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Pheasant
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through gentle simmering.
Espagnole sauce
Forms the rich, thick body of the stew and carries its savoury flavour.
Port
Adds sweetness and depth of flavour to the rich sauce.
Red currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a touch of acidity that balances the rich sauce.
Mushrooms
Add earthy flavour and a tender, meaty texture to the stew.

The step that matters

Simmer gently until tender. Boiling vigorously toughens meat proteins and can make the sauce break or reduce unevenly. A gentle simmer lets connective tissue soften slowly, so the pheasant becomes tender while the sauce stays smooth.

Swap the red currant

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pheasant, sauce, mushroom):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Plumfits better
  3. Avocadofits better
  4. Red currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against pheasant, sauce, mushroom. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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